Alternative Medicine

Infertility is a systemic health issue that many couples do not understand and have a hard time talking about. When a woman is ready to conceive, her heart is passionately involved because she has committed all her love to courageously bringing new life into the world. When she struggles to conceive, she feels inadequate.

A woman’s ability to conceive relies on a well-functioning endocrine system that naturally regulates a delicate balance of hormones within the body. With so many industrial toxins and endocrine disrupting chemicals warring against her natural chemistry inside, hormone levels can be disrupted, suppressed, or artificially increased, sending conflicting messages and changing how the glands function altogether.

Since 23 states have now legalized marijuana for medical use, and since numerous studies have confirmed its value as medicine and have proven that it is safe, it seemed the logical next step to begin relaxing the laws at the federal level.

An Ohio Amish girl diagnosed with leukemia who had fled the U.S. with her family to avoid chemotherapy has been cured after being treated with natural remedies in Central America, according to her grandfather. Doctors fought the family’s decision to end chemotherapy, saying Sarah Hershberger would die without it within six months.

Unbeknownst to the general public, billions of dollars of drug company and government grant money has flowed into finding lead compounds for new drug development over the past 50 years. Although much has been learned about the power and relative safety of natural substances in preventing and treating disease in the process, natural substances rarely if ever find the sustained capitalization necessary to make it through the additional FDA hurdles required for drug approval, which costs over 800 million dollars per drug.

Inadvertently, some of the very same companies and interests which would like for natural substances not to receive the same drug-approval status available to the synthetic ones, are funding research that prove basic vitamins, foods and spices are at least as effective, sometimes more effective, and often much safer and affordable than the drugs they are developing to replace or supplant them.

This means that tens of thousands of studies have already been performed demonstrating that natural substances may prevent and/or treat disease, at least in the test tube and animal models. GreenMedInfo.com, contains close to 20,000 of these. What is even more amazing is that these scientific results often confirm the traditional uses for these natural substances in ancient Indian medicine, Chinese medicine, and countless other folk medicine traditions around the world. This can only make their use more compelling for individuals or healthcare practitioners, as folk medicine contains many thousands of years of tried and true human experience applying these substances to diseases – often with great success.

He then took a mouse embryo in the earliest stage of development and cut it into 5 pieces. The pieces were placed into the mother mouse and 5 identical mice were born.

Prof. Yingqing Zhang noted that in the development of an embryo, that the same beginning embryonic stages occurred every time when a new organ or limb began to form. In the lower animals this beginning cell or limb bud can be excised and it will form a whole new animal.

He discovered that each of these limb or organ bud embryos contain the information to form a whole new organism. He calls these ECIWOs or Embryo Contains the Information of the Whole Organism.

His cause of death is unknown and it is unknown when or where he died. It is assumed he died in 2004 in Shandong, PRC. Upon his death, his department was shut down and his life’s works including all textbooks and over a million original case studies were destroyed.

The Codex Alimentarius Commission was created in 1963 by FAO and WHO to develop food standards, guidelines and related texts such as codes of practice under the Joint FAO/WHO Food Standards Programme.

And here is why I am telling you this:

“The WHO Is A Private Corporation Just Like The Federal Reserve And Receives More Than Two Thirds of Its Funding From The Pharmaceutical Industry.” – Dr. Rima Laibow

The fascist New World Order health inquisition at work!

And those elitists who run your governments, the big corporations (incl. Big Pharma), the MSM and the central banks are about to take away what is left from your freedom and they will only stop when there is NOTHING left.

Think this will not affect you? The coming greatest financial collapse in world history created by the elitists, the Greatest Depression, will affect everyone.

We and our children will live in Orwell’s ‘1984’ if we don’t stop them and even more important create alternatives that do not include them NOW.

(Read the comment from Nicola Spencer and visit http://www.avaaz.org/en/eu_herbal_medicine_ban/?copy)

Patients have lost access to hundreds of herbal medicines today, after European regulations came into force.

Sales of all herbal remedies, except for a small number of popular products for ‘mild’ illness such as echinacea for colds and St John’s Wort for depression have been banned.

For the first time traditional products must be licensed or prescribed by a registered herbal practitioner.
Both herbal remedy practitioners and manufacturers fear they could be forced out of business as a result.

From April 30 many herbal products will begin to disappear from the shelves of Ireland’s 300 herbal outlets following an EU directive which will regulate medicinal herbs in the same way as pharmaceutical products.

BRUSSELS, April 29 (Xinhua) — As Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) is expanding its presence in the global market, a disputed European Union (EU) herbal directive to be fully implemented on Sunday could be a stumbling block on the road.

Starting from May 1, herbal medicinal products, most of which have been sold as food supplements for decades in the EU market, will no longer be allowed unless they have obtained a medicine license, according to the EU Traditional Herbal Medicinal Products Directive adopted in 2004.

The directive introduced a so-called simplified registration procedure with a seven-year transition period for traditional herbal medicinal products to be licensed, including Chinese and Indian traditional medicines.

However, as the transition period is to expire on Saturday, no single Chinese herbal medicinal product has been granted the license.

“For the time being, we can only stock as many herbal medicinal products from China as we can,” said Professor Lin Bin, director of a well-known TCM clinic in the Netherlands.

Croatian natural medicines producers have been anxious over the European Union directive that has just taken effect and which regulates traditional medicinal products.

2004/24/EC bans teas and other herbal remedies to be sold as medicine but rather as food or food supplements, regulated by Codex alimentarius.

The Codex has been accepted by 120 countries around the world including Croatia, and prescribes that these products must be scientifically controlled for about a decade.
Research of one such product costs around 100,000 Euros, the daily Jutarnji List writes.

These developments have made some of Croatia’s herbalists anxious as to how this could affect their livelihood.

Vedran Korounic, the president of the Croatian Society for Natural Medicine says that no country is obligated to accept everything from the Codex. If Croatia does not adopt a law banning the sale of herbs as medicines, no significant changes would take place.

On April 30, 2011, natural healing remedies made of herbs and plants are going to be banned by a directive from the European Union, leaving pharmaceutical products as the primary option for patients .

The directive, called the THMPD (Traditional Herbal Medicinal Products Directive) seeks to not just ban the use of herbal remedies but to actually criminalize them — making the growing or keeping of herbs for use in teas just as illegal as those for less conventional use.

The use of traditional and herbal remedies has already been banned in Canada.

According to the Alliance for Natural Health, the EU, in a pact with Big Pharma, hopes to force the use of pharmaceutical products no matter whether they are truly the right choice for your situation.

On the other hand, proponents claim they are attempting to protect the naive from shoddily produced ‘snake-oil’ elixirs and medicines. They claim that herbal remedies will still be available but that they will simply be safer.

Herbal remedies are used throughout the world and have been in use since the beginning of history.

This proposed ban is seen by the ANH as a direct attack on your right to seek alternative medicine for yourself or your family, the motive being to force your money into the pockets of big pharmaceutical companies.

The Alliance for Natural Health (ANH) is at the forefront of a massive effort to stop what they deem ‘this unprecedented attack’ on the rights of patients. The ANH is taking legal action against this directive, with the assistance of the European Benefyt Foundation (EBF).

Between them they have already managed to raise 90,000 pounds to fight the court case, but they’re requesting your help, too. Because, they say, if people don’t cry out in protest, it will be seen as agreement of the ban, or as lack of interest, which is why a citizens action group has been formed and has been circulating a petition to counter the THMPD Directive.

If the ban is allowed to take effect, the ANH says it will effectively eliminate access to phytotherapy, herbalism and all of the traditional plant-based remedies of Indian, Amazonian, African and Chinese cultures. In a very real sense, then, this could also be seen a a cultural attack on specific ethnic groups and ways of life.

I know it sounded like hyperbole when you were informed about the Codex Alimentarius and its goal to control the world through food and medicine. Today we are seeing this diabolical plan galloping forward to reach its goal to ban all holistic healing protocols and natural/organic food. The Codex clearly supports GMOs, antibiotic use on each and every animal (including your pets), use of hormones for animal products and toxic sprays for agriculture. It applies Napoleonic Law which makes everything illegal unless otherwise approved. That includes organic foods, herbs, and other holistic methods we use for our health and survival.

Please watch this 10″ video on the current banning of herbs in all of Europe and sign the petition. Then pass it around. Time appears to be of the essence.

Then support the ANH (Alliance for Natural Health-EU) in their legal challenge of this draconian directive.

BTW, Canada did pass its Codex bill in 2008 (C-51) which bans herbs and homeopathic remedies are being limited. People did not believe Canada would do something like this, but they did. The FDA is raiding small raw milk farms in the US at an increasing rate only to create financial hardship and force them out of business. The Codex demands that any country that signs onto the Codex force their national laws to change to comply. Codex uses the World Trade Organization model in some ways and we have been seeing the FDA, USDA and the Obama administration aggressively pushing the Codex agenda forward. It is illegal in the sense that it forces people to use toxic chemicals against their will/knowledge. It attacks our civil liberty to pursue our personal lives in peace the way we chose.

(NaturalNews) Amidst all the destructive activities taking place in our world today that deserve attention, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has decided instead to make it a personal mission to destroy the businesses and livelihoods of those trying to help people through natural medicine.

On Thursday, April 14, 2011, dozens of agents from the FDA, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), and the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) conducted an unprovoked, full-scale raid on Hood River, Ore.-based Maxam Nutraceutics, a company that produces and sells nutritional supplements primarily for autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and Alzheimer’s disease.

Back in October 12, 2010, the FDA sent a warning letter to Jim Cole, Founder and CEO of Maxam, notifying him that several of his company’s products were not labeled in accordance with the US Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act. The letter also stated that Maxam had fifteen days from the receipt of the letter to notify the FDA compliance officer of the specific steps it planned to take in order to correct the violations.

You can view a copy of the FDA warning letter here, complete with the name of the FDA compliance officer to whom Jim and his company were instructed to respond, and the FDA district director who sent the letter:http://www.fda.gov/ICECI/Enforcemen…

Oddly enough, the vast majority of the “unapproved labels” in question were not actually labels at all. They were merely customer testimonials about the products that had been accumulated over the years from satisfied customers, and posted online alongside product descriptions on Maxam’s website. Nevertheless, the FDA considered the testimonials to be marketing violations that automatically rendered the products as drugs.

(NaturalNews) Alternative health practitioners in North Carolina (NC) and their patients need your help to defeat a stealth bill that flew under the radar of most everyone in the natural health community. Senate Bill 31, which clarifies the penalties for the “unauthorized practice of medicine,” essentially criminalizes the practice of unlicensed forms of medicine, which includes the work of many naturopaths, homeopaths, herbalists, aromatherapists, and even some midwives in the state. The bill was adopted by a judiciary committee in early March, and it recently passed the NC Senate. Now, the NC House is set to vote on the bill tonight, and unless NC governor Bev Perdue vetoes it, the practice of natural medicine for many in NC may soon become a more severe criminal offense.

SB 31 states that anyone who practices medicine or surgery without having been first “licensed and registered to do so” will be guilty of a Class I felony. Class I felonies in NC are the least severe kinds of felonies, but they do include things like burning crosses on private or public property, and sexually exploiting children. So if passed, SB 31 will essentially make those who practice alternative medicine without an official, state-sanctioned license and permit, criminals of the likes of sexual predators and cross burners.

Proponents of the bill say it fixes a loophole in the current law that classifies out-of-state practitioners who practice without a license as Class I felons, while in-state practitioners who practice without a license are only guilty of a Class I misdemeanor. But what the bill actually appears to do is make it even harder for alternative practitioners who literally cannot be licensed in NC because their work is not “approved,” to practice at all. After all, who is going to be willing to provide alternative medical services for consenting patients when doing so makes them a felon?

(NaturalNews) The late, famed herbalist Dr. John Christopher was nicknamed “Dr. Cayenne” because he was constantly recommending the healing powers of cayenne, the substance found in chili peppers that produces a sensation of heat. He especially advocated using it for cardiovascular health and even made the claim that doses of cayenne could stop heart attacks in progress (http://www.naturalnews.com/026869_c…). Now science has come up with proof cayenne does have a remarkable ability to help the heart. University of Cincinnati (UC) scientists have found that capsaicin, the main component of cayenne, may literally stop a heart attack in its tracks when applied topically.

New research just published in the journal Circulation concludes that a common, over-the-counter pain salve containing capsaicin rubbed on the skin during a heart attack could serve as a cardiac-protectant — reducing or even preventing damage to the heart. The researchers found an amazing 85 percent reduction in cardiac cell death when capsaicin was used. This is the most powerful cardioprotective effect ever recorded, according to Keith Jones, PhD, a researcher in the UC department of pharmacology and cell biophysics.

Dr. Jones and his research team applied capsaicin to specific skin locations in mice that caused reactions in the nervous system. Specifically, sensory nerves in the skin were triggered to activate what the scientists call cellular “pro-survival” pathways in the heart. The result? The heart muscle was protected from injury.

The researchers also found that a tiny incision made in the abdomen of the lab rodents triggered an 81 percent reduction in the death of heart cells. “Both this and the capsaicin effect are shown to work through similar neurological mechanisms,” Dr. Jones explained. “This is a form of remote cardioprotection, using a skin stimulus that activates cardioprotection long before the blocked coronary artery is opened.”

The Government wants to ensure continuing access to unlicensed manufactured herbal medicines via a statutory register
Herbal and Chinese medicines that faced an EU ban are to stay on sale under plans to register UK practitioners for the first time.

The Government moved yesterday to protect consumers wanting herbal products that will disappear from many health food shops after April 30.

Mr Lansley has approved a plan for the Health Professions Council to establish a register of practitioners supplying unlicensed herbal medicines, who will be required to sign up by law.

But from May 1 consumers will be unable personally to buy many traditional herbal products under an EU directive passed in 2004, taking effect this year. Only those which have been licensed in a process costing £80,000 to £120,000 will remain on sale.

At least 50 herbs, including horny goat weed (so-called natural Viagra), hawthorn berry, used for angina pain, and wild yam will no longer be stocked in health food shops, says the British Herbal Medicine Association.

The EU directive demands that a traditional herbal medicinal product must be shown to have been in use for 30 years in the EU – or at 15 years in the EU and 15 years elsewhere – for it to be licensed.

(NaturalNews) At a time when the British Medical Association is calling for an end to national funding for homeopathy and detractors are describing it as “nonsense on stilts”, a Nobel prize-winning scientist has made a discovery that suggests that homeopathy does have a scientific basis after all. In July, Nobel Prize winning French virologist Professor Luc Montagnier shocked fellow Nobel prize-winners and the medical establishment by telling them that he had discovered that water has a memory that continues even after many dilutions.

Until Montagnier’s research, the bulk of mainstream doctors and scientist had maintained that there was no scientific way that multiple dilutions used in homeopathy could possibly work. In part, such views stemmed from lack of understanding. In larger part, such views likely stemmed from a desire to stem the rising popularity of homeopathy and eliminate it as a competition to mainstream medicine – much the same as happened in the United States a century ago.

One of the foundations of homeopathy maintains that the potency of a substance is increased with its dilution. Montagnier discovered that solutions containing the DNA of viruses and bacteria “could emit low frequency radio waves” and that such waves influence molecules around them, turning them into organized structures. The molecules in turn emit waves and Montagnier found that the waves remain in the water even after it has been diluted many times. To a lay person, that may not mean much, but to a scientist is highly suggests that homeopathy may have a scientific basis.

In the New World Order, planned by elite criminals, the people are about to lose everything.

It’s almost a done deal. We are about to see herbal preparations disappear, and the ability of herbalists to prescribe them will also be lost.

Big Pharma has almost reached the finish line of its decades-long battle to wipe out all competition. As of 1 April 2011-less than eight months from now-virtually all medicinal herbs will become illegal in the European Union. The approach in the United States is a bit different, but it’s having the same devastating effect. The people have become nothing more than sinks for whatever swill Big Pharma and Agribusiness choose to send our way, and we have no option but to pay whatever rates they want.

Big Pharma and Agribusiness have almost completed their march to take over every aspect of health, from the food we eat to the way we care for ourselves when we’re ill. Have no doubt about it: this takeover will steal what health remains to us.

If you want to skip the text and find out what you can do, click here.

It Begins Next April Fools Day

In the nastiest April Fool’s Joke of all time, the European Directive on Traditional Herbal Medicinal Products (THMPD) was enacted back on 31 March 2004.(1) It laid down rules and regulations for the use of herbal products that had previously been freely traded.

This directive requires that all herbal preparations must be put through the same kind of procedure as pharmaceuticals. It makes no difference whether a herb has been in common use for thousands of years. The costs for this are far higher than most manufacturers, other than Big Pharma, can bear, with estimates ranging from £80,000 to £120,000 per herb, and with each herb of a compound having to be treated separately.

It matters not that a herb has been used safely and effectively for thousands of years. It will be treated as if it were a drug. Of course, herbs are far from that. They’re preparations made from biological sources. They aren’t necessarily purified, as that can change their nature and efficacy, just as it can in food. It’s a distortion of their nature and the nature of herbalism to treat them like drugs. That, of course, makes no difference in the Big Pharma-ruled edifice of the EU, which has enshrined corporatism in its constitution.

Dr. Robert Verkerk of the Alliance for Natural Health, International (ANH) describes the problem of requiring drug-like compliance on herbal preparations:

Getting a classical herbal medicine from a non-European traditional medicinal culture through the EU registration scheme is akin to putting a square peg into a round hole. The regulatory regime ignores and thus has not been adapted to the specific traditions. Such adaptation is required urgently if the directive is not to discriminate against non-European cultures and consequently violate human rights.(2)

Trade Law

To best understand how this can be happening, one needs to see that trade laws have been at the center of the moves to place all aspects of food and medicine under the control of Big Pharma and Agribusiness.

EU Legislation Puts Herbal Medicine Under Threat

Sept. 19 — With strict European legislation due to come into force next April, will some age-old herbal remedies on sale in health food stores today become, quite literally, a thing of the past?

Industry professionals met in Bologna, Italy last week for a conference held at SANA, the international natural products trade fair, to discuss the future of their sector. From April 2011, all member states will have to comply with a European Union directive which specifies that all herbs produced, manufactured and sold in the EU must be classified as either foods or medicines.

Homeopathic medicine actually gained its greatest popularity primarily due to its impressive successes in the treatment of infectious diseases in the 19th century. The death rates in American and European homeopathic hospitals from cholera, scarlet fever, typhoid, and yellow fever were typically two to eight times less by percentage than those in conventional hospitals (Bradford, 1900; Ullman, 2007). As a result of these successes, at the turn of the 20th century there were over 100 homeopathic hospitals and 22 homeopathic colleges, including Boston University, University of Michigan, New York Medical College, and Hahnemann College of Medicine.

Helen Llewelyn suffered from chronic physical pain and depression as a result of endometriosis which conventional medicine, including surgery, failed to help

Hundreds of delegates to the British Medical Association’s conference are expected to support seven motions all opposed to the use of public money to pay for remedies which they claim are, at best, scientifically unproven and, at worst, ineffective.

Critics of the 200-year-old practice also want junior doctors to be exempt from working at homoeopathic hospitals because it goes against the principles of evidence-based medicine. Sugar pills and placebos have no place in a modern health service, they say, especially as the NHS must find £20bn in savings over the next few years.

But supporters claim homoeopathy helps thousands of patients with chronic conditions such as ME, asthma, migraine and depression who have not responded to conventional medical treatments. The British Homoeopathic Association (BHA) points out that less than 0.01 per cent of the massive NHS drug bill is spent on homoeopathic tinctures and pills.

Nevertheless, the conference will also hear calls for homoeopathic remedies to be banned from chemists unless they are clearly labelled as placebos rather than medicines. The over-the-counter market is worth around £40m a year, and rising, according to Mintel, the consumer research organisation.

(NaturalNews) The U.S. Food and Drug Administration today stands accused of taking part in the kidnapping and illegal extradition of a permanent resident of Ecuador, in violation of both international law and Ecuadorian law.

Greg Caton, owner and operator of Alpha Omega Labs (www.AltCancer.com), an herbal products company that sells anti-cancer herbal remedies made with Ecuadorian medicinal herbs, was arrested at gunpoint at a road checkpoint in Ecuador, then transported to an Ecuadorian holding facility to await a hearing on December 14, 2009. Caton was expected to be set free by the Ecuadorian judge at that hearing based on the facts of the case which indicated Caton’s permanent residency in Ecuador is legal and valid.

Three days before the hearing could take place, Caton was taken from his holding facility and, with the help of U.S. State Department employees, involuntarily placed on an American Airlines plane headed for Miami. An Ecuadorian judge rushed to the airport in Guayaquil and demanded that Caton be released from the plane, stating that the attempted deportation was illegal, but American Airlines employees reportedly refused to allow Caton to leave the plane, stating that the plane was “U.S. territory” and that Ecuadorian law did not apply there (even though the plane was still on the tarmac in Guayaquil and under the direction of the air traffic control tower there).

The plane then departed Guayaquil and continued its flight to Miami where Greg Caton was held in a federal detention facility to await trial in the U.S.

His crimes? Selling herbal medicine and daring to tell the truth about those medicines on his website.

By the way, you can listen to my exclusive interview with Cathryn Caton, who details these events in a downloadable MP3 audio file. Find the file here: http://www.naturalnews.com/Index-Po…
FDA vs. Greg Caton

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has, for many years, pursued Caton, accusing him of selling “unapproved drugs” — herbal medicines that have never been, and will never be, approved by the FDA to treat anything. He was convicted of these crimes in 2003 and served 33 months in federal prison.

During a flu epidemic in China 1000 still healthy people were treated with acupuncture, not one of this group that was treated with acupuncture got ill. (If I remember it correctly 97% of the population got ill.)

I just heard today that “Codex Alimentarius” is well on it’s way in the EU. This is the worst case scenario for alternative medicine and organic food. This would also be the end for homeopathy.

(NaturalNews) Homeopathy was successful in treating the flu epidemic of 1918 and can provide answers to questions about the 2009 Swine Flu. Homeopathy can provide quick and inexpensive relief for symptoms of the flu.

A system of medicine based on the principles of “like cures like,” homeopathy uses plant, mineral and animal sources for the natural flu remedies. Homeopathy is based on ideas from ideas dating back to Egyptian medicine.

The term “homeopathy” was coined by the medical doctor and medical reformer, Samuel Hahnemann in the 1800s. Homeopathic remedies have been used to treat flu symptoms for two centuries.

Was homeopathy successful in treating the flu epidemic of 1918?
Yes.
While the mortality rate of people treated with traditional medicine and drugs was 30 percent, those treated by homeopathic physicians had mortality rate of 1.05 percent.
Of the fifteen hundred cases reported at the Homeopathic Medical Society of the District of Columbia there were only fifteen deaths. Recoveries in the National Homeopathic Hospital were 100%. In Ohio, of 1,000 cases of influenza, Dr. T. A. McCann, MD, Dayton, Ohio reported NO DEATHS.

What homeopathic remedies were used to successfully treat the Spanish flu in 1918?
Gelsemium and Bryonia
According the Dr. Frank Wieland, MD, in Chicago, “(With) 8,000 workers we had only one death. Gelsemium was practically the only remedy used. We used no aspirin and no vaccines.”

Homeopathy was 98% successful in treating the Spanish flu epidemic in 1918?
Yes.
Ohio reported that 24,000 cases of flu treated allopathically had a mortality rate of 28.2% while 26,000 cases of flu treated homeopathically had a mortality rate of 1.05% . In Connecticut, 6,602 cases were reported, with 55 deaths, less than 1%. Dr. Roberts, a physician on a troop ship during WWI, had 81 cases of flu on the way over to Europe. He reported, “All recovered and were landed. Every man received homeopathic treatment.

A healthy body with a good immune system has no problems with infections. A body, that is loaded with poisons from food, water, air pollution, vaccines etc. is more and more becoming acidic, the excellent repair systems of the body start to fail and the immune system cannot function properly anymore.

An acidic environment gives the signal to mother nature that the body is dying. Parasites will take the body down and recycle it for her. Harmful parasites cannot thrive in a alkaline environment.

(Yes, the body is keeping the blood pH-value alkaline, it has to or it dies immediately. The body keeps the blood as pure as possible at all costs. So if you see changes in the blood pH-value the crisis is already very, very severe or deadly.)

In TCM (Traditional Chinese Medicine) they say that you can only get seriously ill, if you have been ‘sick’ before.

A well functioning immune system is much, much stronger than all the police, armies and special forces in the world combined.

CHICAGO – Researchers say they found an “alarming” increase in children’s ear, nose and throat infections nationwide caused by dangerous drug-resistant staph germs. Other studies have shown rising numbers of skin infections in adults and children caused by these germs, nicknamed MRSA, but this is the first nationwide report on how common they are in deeper tissue infections in the head and neck, the study authors said. These include certain ear and sinus infections, and abcesses that can form in the tonsils and throat.

The study found a total of 21,009 pediatric head and neck infections caused by staph germs from 2001 through 2006. The percentage caused by hard-to-treat MRSA bacteria more than doubled during that time from almost 12 percent to 28 percent.

“In most parts of the United States, there’s been an alarming rise,” said study author Dr. Steven Sobol, a children’s head and neck specialist at Emory University.

The study appears in January’s Archives of Otolaryngology, released Monday.